By Gary Symons
TLL Editor in Chief
Huge news for content licensing as The Walt Disney Company and TikTok announced a global agreement that will let fans and creators discover and produce content using scenes and moments from Disney movies and shows.
The deal will allow clips from hit franchises like Star Wars, Toy Story and the Marvel Cinematic Universe to be used by TikTok creators. That means Disney clips will soon be popping up in TikTok videos, which will also be shared on Disney’s short-form video platform, Verts.
The deal will begin as a pilot program in the United States in the coming months, with plans to expand to other markets. As part of the agreement, a curated collection of Disney-related, fan-created content from TikTok will be brought to the Disney+ app.
At launch, short-form videos from participating creators who opt into the program will appear on both TikTok and in a section called Verts on Disney+, featuring characters and stories from across Disney’s brands, including Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and FX.
TikTok will give its creators access to assets tied to hundreds of films and series from Disney’s library. The companies said the videos will be refreshed regularly to engage subscribers in ongoing fan conversations and help them discover more content on Disney+.
Asad Ayaz, chief marketing and brand officer for The Walt Disney Company, said the partnership reflects the role fans play in extending Disney’s stories.
“The best storytellers are fans first,” Ayaz said. “That has always been true at Disney, and today, fans are celebrating our stories in entirely new ways. This collaboration creates a new bridge between the stories we tell and the creativity they inspire, giving creators a bigger stage to share what they’ve made, and audiences more to discover on Disney+ every day.”
Dawn Yang, global head of entertainment at TikTok, said creators are central to the collaboration in what may be the largest ‘user-generated content’ licensing deal in history.
“Creators are at the heart of everything we do at TikTok,” Yang said. “Their creativity extends the life of films and shows into conversations that fans discover and share. Together with Disney, we’re bringing the authentic creator expression of the TikTok community to Disney+, inviting audiences to experience the shared creativity that makes fandom so powerful.”
As part of the agreement, Disney and TikTok will jointly run the Disney Creator Ambassador Program, a tiered initiative meant to give top creators access to rewards, increased visibility, exclusive events and career development opportunities. The companies described the program as an effort to build relationships with emerging creative talent.
In essence, this agreement smashes the wall between the studio-created content that is created by Disney and other studios around the world, and the type of user-generated content that is created by individuals on their TikTok accounts.
TikTok and Disney pointed to data on the role fan-created content plays in entertainment discovery. According to internal TikTok data, users shared an average of 6.5 million film- and TV-related posts on the platform each day last year. The companies also cited survey data showing that nearly half of viewers said they went on to watch a movie or TV show on a streaming service or television after discovering related content on TikTok.
This is not the first time Disney has negotiated a deal for content sharing. In fact, Disney raised eyebrows when it signed a deal with OpenAI to license its content and characters for use on the tech company’s Sora video generation platform. That deal fell apart when OpenAI decided to get out of the video-creation side of the business, as Sora cost a tremendous amount to run, but generated very little financial return. The agreement with Disney was cancelled in March when Sora shut down.
However, entertainment and social media experts say this deal between Disney and TikTok shows greater promise.
“Disney owns some of the world’s biggest franchises but ownership of attention is shifting towards creators,” social media expert Matt Navarra told BBC News. “Hollywood used to market at fans. Now it needs to give fans the raw materials to market with it, and that is quite a profound shift.”
As the deal rolls into operational reality, TikTok will offer their creators access to assets from Disney’s vast library. The TikTok videos they create will be refreshed regularly to engage Disney+ subscribers, so as to stimulate fan conversations, communities, and engagement.
The deal with TikTok wasn’t the only big news coming from Disney, which also announced in its Q3 earnings call that it is undertaking a major restructuring of its licensing operation. That will see the Disney Consumer Products division being moved from its Experiences unit to Disney Entertainment, which operates under the umbrella of Disney Studios.